EAST LANSING, Mich. – It is easy to get caught up in the excitement when a new gadget comes along. But, determining whether that piece of technology will really help you and be cost effective isn’t always easy. 

A team of animal scientists from Michigan State University, Iowa State University, North Carolina State University, and Scotland’s Royal College, has received a $1 million grant by the USDA-National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative to study the advancement of precision farming in the U.S. swine industry.

According to Michigan State University, precision livestock farming “applies technological advances to the monitoring of and data collection from individual animals within large herds with the hope of optimizing the welfare, and contribution of each animal.” 

“One of the things that often occurs when researchers work with precision livestock farming is we get really fascinated by all the cool bells and whistles of the technology,” said Janice Siegford, Michigan State University animal scientist, who is leading the research team.

“We sometimes lose sight of the fact that these processes have to actually go on a farm to be practically used by farmers, and be something they can afford,” she added. “Our focus is to really understand, from the human perspective, what is useful, and how valuable the technologies and processes are in reality.”

Beginning this June, the group will start to explore precision livestock needs, public perceptions and the willingness of farmers, producers and consumers to pay for new technology. 

The end goal is to determine how new technology is viewed by the swine industry at large, with respect to what is practical and useful for farmers and consumers.

To achieve this, the team has established a stakeholder advisory group to brainstorm ideas.

“Everybody from big swine breeding companies, who really want to mine this data to help precisely breed and select pigs, to companies like retailers and grocers, to auditing groups that certify animal welfare [are involved],” she said.

“We are going to bring together these partners and ask them what precision livestock farming can do for them,” she said. “How they can use technology and the data it generates for the aspect of the pork industry that they’re involved with. 

“What they think are some of the valuable attributes that they’d like to see developed into technology,” she added. “And we want to make sure that where farmers invest their money is useful to them, as well as results in a product that consumers are OK buying.”

To fully understand the benefits and drawbacks of precision agriculture, the research team will focus on two priority areas:

• Maintenance of a productive workforce: livestock farming technology can replace some labor on the farm, including technology to do repetitive work, and do it in more detail, but is nowhere near enough.

• Acquisition of reliable animal-health data: an ongoing pressure for the animal agriculture industry to better monitor the welfare of the animals, and show that progress. Precision agriculture allows farmers better data on the health of each animal.

Siegford said she’s been working for over 15 years with technologies to automatically detect and record animal behavior in dairy cattle, laying hens, and pigs. 

“I initially focused on using this technology in a research setting to answer scientific questions related to animal behavior and animal welfare,” she said. 

“I saw it as a way to gain information from animals 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no matter where the animal was in the environment, or what it was doing, which is much better than when a human tries to observe an animal or group of animals,” she added.

During her work, she said one theme that kept coming up was whether this technology would have any practical value to farmers. 

“Did it tell them anything useful?” she asked. “Could they afford it? Would it work on commercial farms? This project is all about answering those questions in the swine industry. We want to know what producers, vets and other stakeholders at different parts of the pork supply chain know and think about precision livestock farming technology. 

“We want to learn what producers want from this technology, how much they value it, and what they are willing to pay to use it on their farms,” she said. 

She said she and her team also want to know what consumers think of buying pork from pigs raised using precision livestock farming technology, and what they are willing to pay for such products.

“We then want to take what we have learned and share it with the swine industry, including developers of technology, to help producers pick (precision livestock farming technology) that works for them, and to give developers insight into what is wanted,” she said.

“In order to optimize that individual animal’s performance and also its welfare, we’re thinking about things that happen at the level of that one animal in real time, collecting the data from that animal, and then processing it to tell us what it means and what actions to take,” she said.

To accomplish this, she said Michigan State University will partner with North Carolina State and Iowa State University, in key U.S. pork producing states, as well as Scotland’s Royal College, which has been conducting social science research with producers in the United Kingdom related to on-farm issues related to precision livestock farming. 

Other collaborators represent Michigan State University animal science researchers and extension educators Dale Rozeboom, Juan Steibel, Madonna Benjamin, Dave Thomas and Casey Zangaro.

“Together, we combine expertise in animal science, veterinary medicine, data science and analysis, social science, economics and extension,” Siegford said. “All of which are key to getting this work done.  

“Collaboration and coordination among such a big team (there are 11 of us total in the grant team) requires communication, trust, and planning,” she added. “We are building on previous collaborations among team members, which certainly helps in terms of understanding each other’s expertise and abilities, and how best to communicate.”

“Together with our team (Dr. Dale Rozeboom, Dr. Madonna Benjamin, Mr. Dave Thompson and Ms. Casey Zangaro in addition to Dr. Steibel and myself), we have an amazing collaboration dedicated to helping understand what the swine industry wants and needs from (precision livestock farming),” she said. “Hopefully, this results in the creation of (precision livestock farming) that is useful, usable, and beneficial.”

She said ultimately, precision agriculture adoption boils down to cost. She added she hopes this study will provide context on what the industry holds valuable.

“For producers, precision agriculture can be a heavy cost investment and sometimes because technology moves so rapidly, it can be really hard to decide what to invest in that’s still going to be around in five years,” she said. “So, we hope to get a clear picture from farmers about their driving needs, and what they see as important.”